MONTHLY REPORT--KEY WEST BUREAU --FEBRUARY 1987

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 13, 2012
• Sequence Number: 11
• Publication Date: March 9, 1987
• Content Type: MEMO

Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
FOREIGN BROADCAST INFORMATION SERVICE
KEY WEST BUREAU
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FBIS
NAVAL AIR STATION
MAIN P.O. BOX 1056 TRUMAN ANNEX BLDG. 1355
KEY WEST, FLORIDA 33041-1056 OFFICE: [phone]
MFL-7025
9 March 1987
[phone]
[phone]
TELEX: 803046
MEMORANDUM TO: Director, Foreign Broadcast Information Service
THROUGH: Chief, Operations Group
SUBJECT: Monthly Report--Key West Bureau--February 1987
The bureau chief visited Panama this month for background on
that bureau's remote operations in Central America, in connection
with our proposed monitorial project in Port au Prince.
Panama also volunteered to assist us by sending TDY monitors and
teletypists to Key West until the end of the summer when we ho e to
get some people hired and aboard. Our first guest monitor, STAT
arrived on 20 February and will be with us until 3 April when STAT
belief is scheduled to arrive. Similar 6-week tours by
teletypists begin 9 March.
A. Monitorial/Editorial
Television junkies became Cuba's latest casualties this month
as Fidel cut some 5 hours daily from his Havana weekday programming
and 2 hours on Saturday and Sunday, reportedly as part of an overall
austerity program.
We tested some backstop coverage plans while also practicing
our technical skills this month by satisfactorily recording phone
patches placed by the peripatetic bureau chief from Panama who placed
a number of calls to the bureau from various capitals throughout
Central America.
The few remaining tangles in our new commo line directly up
to the Miami switch were unraveled this month. We are now awaiting
ADD's and a Lockheed team to come in early April to
install the necessary new equipment.
Following the death this month of chief t
our small staff of three part-timers-
-showed considerable ingenuity
and resourcefulness in coping with our loss and keeping the shop up
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
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and running. In particular, has doubled her work hours, while STAT
have pitched in to do man of the necessary but STAT
underrated little chores" that always looked after in his STAT
unassuming way.
Bureau Engineer) (helped take us into the
remote age this month when he wired the bureau into our new Boca
Chica 1,700-foot beverage antenna some 15 miles up the road from us
on the Naval Air Station. Radio Broadcast Monitor is STAT
currently cruising out this new antenna, which will soon be rest-rung
to include two long wires. Results up to now have been encouraging
but not complete, since has not been able to make precise STAT
comparisons with our two beverage antennas that remained down this
month due to construction next door to the bureau. We now hope to
have these antennas back up and operating by mid-March.
accompanied the bureau chief on 25 February to
Saddlebunch Key where Radio Marti continues to try to test its
fall-back transmitter site. A consulting engineer at the site
explained the operation and later visited the bureau to discuss the
impact of Radio Marti's transmissions on our mission.
D. Cruising
STAT
The thrust of an extensive survey that completed this 51A1
month revealed that Cuba has greatly expanded t e use of FM
broadcasts in its local domestic networks. Certain mediumwave
changes also point to continued improvement and expansion of Cuban
domestic operations which began in 1982.
DRD roving recruiter and deep-sea diver s ent a
couple of days with us reviewin our recruitment effort.
arrived just as F g:1 a most promising candidate,
finished up her testing and headed back up to the snow of the
District.
A remaining bottle of Christmas champagne was popped on 6
February to celebrate the promotions of monitor/editors
B. Buildings and Grounds
Like the proverbial bad penny, the contractor responsible for
our houses returned to "finish" the project this month. The company
apparently lost a long, drawn out battle with the Navy which refuses
STAT
STAT
STAT
STAT
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to release a final payment until everything on a lengthy "punchlist"
is redone to government satisfaction. Although many defects were
corrected this month, the battle is expected to stretch out as the
two sides continue to argue over what remains to be done.
Our bureau emergency generator kicked in repeatedly this
month, roaring for over 11 hours as Key West suffered a rash of power
outages due to equipment breakdowns at City Electric Supply. The
outages pointed to the need for uninterrupted power supplies to
protect our growing number of PC's as well as our video recorders
which have no back-up batteries for their built-in timers.
IV. Visitors
A. To the bureau:
1. Fred Rathert, Bill Smiley, and Randy Tighe, Radio Marti, 3
2. Robert J. Glennon, FCC Ft Lauderdale, 10 Feb.
3. Spanish monitorial candidate, 10-13 Feb.
4. 0/Personnel, 19-20 Feb.
5. ESG on person travel, 13 Feb.
6. Panama monitor, 20 Feb-3 Apr.
7. Spanish monitorial candidate, 24-26 Feb.
8. DRD, 26 Feb-1 Mar.
B. From the bureau:
Bureau Chief, TDY to Panama, 11-13 Feb.
V. COMMUNITY EVENTS
The attached item about Key West appeared in the 4 March WALL
STREET JOURNAL.
Chief, Key West Bureau
WALL STREET JOURNAL article
Nonexpendable Property Report
Production Report
cc: C/Panama, C/Paraguay
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
Writers Gatheron the
By B.A. THOMAS
Key West, Fla.
Philip Caputo looked tanned and tough,'
just right for the author of "A Rumor of
'War," which tells about his' time. as a
Marine in Vietnam.._ This 'Pulitzer" Prize
winner pulled no punches. "Our politicians
are corrupt," he said.' "Developers are
greedy, and the tourists are running over
us." He was talking about his home town,
where an, audience attending the Fifth An-,
nual Key West Literary Seminar?and Tour-'
scribbled down.' his' every;word.' . ' ?
Mr. Caputo. was,obviously not speaking
for the Key,West Chamber of Commerce,
but then this coral outpost at the southern-,.
most,end of the Florida Keys has seldom
welcome ' Rotarians. Instead it has ' at-
The.Mobile'Guide '
Key West Literary Seminar
tracted _ Spanish ?conquistadors, adven-
turers in sponging; rum running, cigar
making and wrecking, and the U.S. Navy.
The laid-back, barefoot conch-Cuban-Baha-
mian culture that attracted Ernest Hem-
ingway and Tennessee Williams has of late
offered up its sun-bleached bones to a
newer Invasion 'of real-estate agents, ho-
mosexuals and Yankee intellectuals, who
are gentrifying the old "Rock." There are '
more than 55 writers now living in the Key
West literary community, tramping the
same docks and beaches that crop up in
Hemingway's "To Ha""e and Have Not"
and Tom McGuane's "Ninety-Two in th e
Shade.'.'* 'You could say that the Island has
played a "respectable role in American lit-
.:; erary,history,,and, that was exactly what
this winter's literary seminar planners had
In mind when they picked the meeting's
resonant theme: Key West's influence on
the writer's imagination. Bill Robertson,
book editor of the Miami Herald and hon
iz
orary seminar chairman, said, "We might
and ' magic of the city- at the, end of the'
road, but it will be a wonderful failure." `.
We teachers, librarians and note takers
listened.to as many points of view about,
the city as there were writers and scholars
participating in the seminar. Alison Lurie,
another Pulitzer Prize winner (for her
novel, "Foreign Affairs") called Key West
a relaxing find in her peripatetic life. For
. eight years one of the 28,000 winter inhabi-
tants, she encouraged the seminar audi-
ence to write and travel, because "real lit-
erature, like travel, is always a sur-
prise."
The poet James Merrill, a longtime res-'
ident, read Elizabeth Bishop's memories of,
her 1930s home here in a voice as glorious
as Ms. Bishop's poetry. When she de-
scribed the shallow coves as having "the
color of a gas flame turned as low as possi-
ble," those who had fished the Keys could
testify to her gift at finding the perfect im-
age.
Many confusing, even divisive opinions
emerged from the mouths of'our speakers.`
According to who was talking at the mo-
ment, Key West does have an influence on
writers; it doesn't; It did once when it was
more authentic and Hemingway did his
most productive work here; it never did
because it was always a dubious place pop-
ulated by sleazes. The most' dyspeptic,
speakers asserted that writers have come
mainly to Key West to escape the grim
."the northern latitudes. `
Hard-nosed Mr. Caputo and Rust.Hills;
fiction editor of Esquire, challenged the no-'
tion that any mere piece of 'real estate
;,.could be Inspirational. "The writer's home
Is in his mind," Mr. Caputo said flatly. Mr.
Hills said that people who "never earned
their living as writers occasionally end up
somewhere like Key West." But Richard
Wilbur, poet and resident, noted that ,the
great Connecticut Yankee.:. poet Wallace
Stevens was enchanted by the physicality
and sexual steaminess of the. tropics. Ac-
cording to Mr. Wilbur, Mr. Stevens tonsid.
ered Key West "venereal soil." We `fell in love with this romantic non-
sense.- We bought books that were auto-.
graphed on the spot. Even the dead,. Ms.
Bishop and'Mr. Stevens, sold out immedi-
ately, without' signing anyone's copy.
Among the living, Messrs. McGuane and
Caputo sold briskly..: No matter that ,Mr.
McGuane, counterculture hero and one'of .
our star speakers, has gone gray and
moved to Montana. He was as feisty -as'
ever, lambasting Hollywood- for' turning
writers' dreams into nightmares. No mat-
ter that Mr. ? Caputo seems to have done
well in local real estate. He still talks like
a Marine lieutenant.
And even though Hemingway and Wil-
liams are long gone, we could feel their
venerated spirits hovering over us, urging
us to get into the mood of the place. So, as
we ate our lunch overlooking azure bights, -
watching the local police learn scuba div-
ing, we took to assuming they were train-
ing to rescue sunken drug caches.
So, as soon -as we .ere set free from
note taking, we tested our fantasies fur-
ther, searching, like Somerset Maugham,
who found his inspiration West and East of
here,. for "shady characters in sunny
places." We hung over picket fences,
imagining swashbucklers and smugglers
hiding behind palm trees. and East African
orchids. For the moment, we could pretend
that the gingerbreaded Spanish colonial
houses and conch cottages weren't being
restored by Manhattan dress designers and
songwriters to the tune of six figures.
We found those dark bars and icy beers.
What matter if the tough' shrimpers and
Latino tunes once ' rife at Captain Tony's
have been replaced by college kids and
acid rock? Papa would still like the bar's
comfortable frowziness. And when we gog-
gled. at the Spanish treasures brought up
from nearby waters by the intrepid Mel
Fisher or heard hair-raising tales of the
flourishing local drug trade, we recognized
fresh fodder for fiction as good as any ever
written here.
On the last day of the seminar, we gath- ,
ered on Mallory dock for the renowned
Key West sunset. Almost banal in its stagi-
ness, a flaming sun slipped into a black-
ened sea. Nearby, a grungy relic of the
'60s provided musical accompaniment,
wailing off-key a song called "Cheese-
burger in Paradise." Somehow, this 'was'
Key West as, was supposed to be-seedy
and, as advertised, brimming with inspira-
tion.
Ms. Thomas is a free-lance writer based
in Nett- York.
And when Jane O'Reilly, resident and
author of "The Girl I Left Behind,"
boasted that Key West has "all of the vir-
tues of a small town, and none of the re-
straints," we felt we had. finally got the
Key West image clearly in focus. Far from
being a clone of the pretentious Hamptons,
and irk spite of art and gentrification, Key
West hadn't lost its soul, Its dark bars or
its dangerous characters.
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
NONEXPENDABLE PROPERTY
Monthly Report, Key West Bureau
FEBRUARY 1987
PROPERTY RECEIVED: 1 EACH Oscilloscope, Dual Channel, 15 MHZ,
Hewlett-Packard, Mdl. 1220A
SN: 2233 S 0 3437
Unit cost: $897.00 from HQs.
1 EACH Teleprinter, Extel RO, Mdl. AF-11R
SN: 122820
Unit cost: $1649.00 from Cyprus.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
I. TOTALS FROM ALL SOURCES:
TOTAL PUBLISHABLE WORDAGE FILED DURING MONTH: 96,410
TOTAL NON-PUBLISHABLE WORDAGE FILED DURING MONTH : 29,950
TOTAL NUMBER OF PUBLISHABLE ITEMS FILED DURING MONTH : 402
BROADCAST PRESS AGENCIES PUBLICATIONS
II. INPUT OF REGULAR COVERAGE: 2,575 14,700 21
(PUBLISHABLE WORDS PER WEEK MIN MIN ISSUES
III. OUTPUT FROM ALL SOURCES:
(PUBLISHABLE WORDS PER MONTH)
BAHAMAS
Nassau Domestic Service
in English
Nassau THE TRIBUNE
in English
BARBADOS
Bridgetown CANA
in English
Bridgetown SUNDAY ADVOCATE
in English
BELIZE
Belize City Domestic Service
in English
Belize Times
in English
CUBA
Havana Radio Progreso Network
in Spanish
5,180
Havana Radio Reloi Network 11,450
in Spanish
Havana Radio Rebelde Network 3,000
in Spanish
Havana Radio Periodico Del Aire 970
in Spanish
25,930
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 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/06/13: CIA-RDP88-00733R000100070011-5
KEY WEST BUREAU PRODUCTION REPORT FOR FEBRUARY 1987
CUBA
Havana Domestic Service
in Spanish
Havana Tele-Rebelde Network 16,230
in Spanish
Havana Television Cubana Network 580
in Spanish
Havana Television Service 9,170
in Spanish
DOMIN'CAN REPUBLIC
Santo Domingo Cadena Brea Pena 1,640
in Spanish
Santo Domingo Radio Antillas Network -0-
in Spanish
Santo Domingo LISTIN DIARIO
in Spanish
JAMAICA
Kingston Domestic Service
in English
Kingston DAILY GLEANER
in English
Kingston SUNDAY GLEANER
in English
MEXICO
Mexico City NOTIMEX
in Spanish
NETHERLANDS ANTILLES
Bonaire Trans World Radio
in English
THE NETHERLANDS
Hilversum International
in English
3,030
SURINAME
Paramaribo International Service 9 090
in English
8,160
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